» Workers Rights Board

St. Louis and Kansas City Workers’ Rights Boards

In addition to building alliances between labor and community groups, Jobs with Justice built a new structure – Workers’ Rights Boards – to combat the lack of an adequate legal framework to support worker and economic justice issues . With Boards in 20 cities we now have a proven track record that these locally based institutions made up of community leaders, religious leaders, academics, elected officials, and other prominent members of the community, are effective vehicles to address workers’ and community concerns.

Although the Boards have no legal authority, the Boards can produce real results. Where the withered legal framework is slow to move the Boards spur important action. The St. Louis Workers’ Rights Board has protected workers threatened with firing for organizing, caregivers dismissed for reporting patient abuse, and immigrant workers denied pay for hours work simply because the employer thought they could get away with it. In 2011, the Kansas City Workers’ Rights Board convened for the first time, ready to be a moral voice for workers in the community.

Workers’ Rights Boards proceedings are part of a one-two counterpunch that includes direct action by labor, community and faith-based activists.